>> Promoter: From around the globe,
it's TheCUBE covering HPE Discover
virtual experience brought to you by HPE.
>> Hi and welcome back to TheCUBE's coverage
of HPE Discover 2020 the virtual experience.
I'm Stu Miniman and happy to welcome back to the program.
One of our cube alumni, Partha Narasimhan,
he is the Chief Technology Officer of Aruba,
which of course Aruba is an HPE company.
Partha, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thank you, sir.
>> All right, so, HPE Discover is a big event.
But you know for the networking people,
of course Aruba has its own event
atmosphere which happened just ahead of discover.
You gave a keynote there,
some news there that we'll talk about.
But you know,
bring our audience up to speed a little bit
about the role of the networking inside of HPE with Aruba.
>> Right And so, you know, when Aruba primary focus
is networking and security,
we really have expanded in the past few years
the scope of the problems that we work on
to what we call the intelligent edge.
And we define the edge as where people are, where action is,
and how do you think about the kinds of experiences
that end users care about,
in addition to just connecting securely
to their absence of data on the upside,
but also about experiences in the physical world.
And then there are these stakeholders
that care about efficiency, productivity and so on.
So, the intelligent edge,
it includes networking and security,
but it really focuses on people and business stakeholders.
>> Yeah that's great,
often we talk to the business outcomes
that matter and experiences.
It's so much about people.
The current global pandemic
absolutely has put a real focus on people.
From a networking standpoint of course,
everybody's working from home a lot more.
You know VPN services need to be considered.
And you know, what I'm curious the impact
from your business and your customers
as to what's happening.
>> Right, and this is the focus on the intelligent edge
on people's experiences and business outcomes
is actually because it has been highlighted now
with the presence of the pandemic.
Right, if you define go back to the definition of the edge,
as where people are and where action is.
The last two to three months,
a lot of that is just in people's homes,
in all of our homes, that's where I am right now.
And that's where we all have been.
So what does that mean for where the edge is,
and so we kind of see at least three phases in here,
where right now we focus on business continuity,
which is how do you now enable employees
to continue to stay productive
and connect securely to the enterprise data and apps,
but also when some of these subsides,
how do you bring people back safely into physical spaces
and that's what we call business recovery.
And then as I talk to customers,
there's a spectrum of opinions about what is going to stick.
And you know, if you call that the new normal
when the pandemic goes out of our lives,
it doesn't look like we're all going back
to where we were in January or February.
It's here and so what is the new normal
and how does the edge repel from it,
and that's really what we focus on.
>> You know, that's so important right now
Partha, when you look at enterprises
rapidly adjusting to situations is not necessarily
what we think of,
of course in the last few months,
we've had to move very fast
to be able to enable the workforce.
I would love to hear what you're hearing ,
from CIOs that their end customers,
and how are you helping them react to things,
much faster than they might have pre-COVID?
>> Okay, so a lot of the business continuity
actually the focus is on IT, right?
Because you know, how do you deploy technologies
or actually leverage the technologies
that have already been deployed
in order to allow employees
to stay productive from their homes.
And there's been a spike in demand,
for Work From Home Solutions.
Believe it or not Aruba had...
we built a solution called the remote access point,
way back in 2005 or 2006
when there was a different pandemic
at that time as a business continuity solution.
But given the intensity of how this pandemic
has affected all of our lives,
there was a spike in demand for Work From Home Solutions,
not just from a connectivity and security perspective,
but also every employee's home is very different
based on the speed of your internet connection.
How many other people are at home?
How many other devices are connecting to the home network?
And what else is happening other three Netflix streams
running in parallel?
And in which case in that kind of an environment,
how do we now provides some visibility
for IT to help employee getting their work done.
So why we built a remote access point
as a security solution,
we ended up realizing that what we really solved
for the end user was a better user experience
where they just see the same network
that they see in the office,
they see it at home.
But more again, helping IT pro get some visibility
and maybe troubleshoot some issues employees might have.
So all three of these
have been integral components of that solution
and you know it became even more front and center
when the pandemic hit in terms of the spike in one.
>> Yeah, when I think about security
has really, in the last five years or so,
escalated only to the C suite,
but at the board level for constant consideration.
Has the current situation,
really raised the visibility of networking to the C suite?
>> It has stayed essentially the focus
until now could have been that okay,
all my employees get into the office
and how do I now create an environment
within the office building
that allows for collaboration,
that allows for seamless connectivity and security.
But the pace at which we all had go
to this work from home situation
was the time window was so short
that IT had to respond quickly.
And they had to respond quickly,
where they could have dealt
with a few dozen office buildings now,
thousands of employees homes
and so all of the effort that we put in,
to create that solution earlier,
now paid off because we were ready for this situation
even though we all live in interesting times
and I never want to see this again in my lifetime.
But the fact that we had a focus on it
for the last 15 years or so, made it ready for us.
But more importantly as we look at,
as a business continuity phase was about IT
the business recovery,
which is probably where we are starting to enter right now
of how do we now bring people back
safely into into physical spaces?
Now the stakeholders that set is expanding, right?
At HPE we have this team called the crisis management team.
That is looking at,
how do I now manage not just a crisis,
but bringing people back in facilities
is important because if things space has to get rearranged
in order to make certain density or spacing objectives.
So they have some interest in their marketing
if you're a retail or hospitality and so on.
They get interested in it.
So there's a lot of other stakeholders
now rely on the infrastructure
that IT has deployed primarily
for connectivity and security.
Now that same infrastructure
is going to go benefit other stakeholders
so that you get competitive advantage
in the business recovery phase, right?
If I'm able to safely bring a lot of my key employees
that are required to be in physical spaces back in
while addressing all of their concerns
about the health and the safety associated with recovery,
that definitely gives me a competitive advantage.
We believe that the solutions that Aruba has provided to IT
until now are now there's a spotlight shining on it
because a lot of people a lot of other stakeholders
could benefit from that infrastructure
that has already been.
>> Yeah, there's a lot of conversation going on
in the industry about what things look like post pandemic.
And you know, while there is still obviously
a lot of uncertainties,
we really think there will be some hybrid modes going on.
So work from home might not stay permanent,
but many companies are talking about being more flexible.
So how does that impact what you're offering,
cause, you know I think about from the enterprise,
I needed a certain density now I need to think about,
how do I make sure that whether you're in the office
or you know working remotely
that I can have you participate
and have the same kind of experience wherever you are.
>> And this is again,
this is where we rely on the network infrastructure, right?
Because if you create a connectivity network
that enables mobility is secure and is always available,
it drives participation.
That participation leverages network data
to provide visibility into physical spaces,
and think about even the recovery phase
and we see actually three,
at least three interesting scenarios in our conversations
with customers on how the network can help them
in the recovery phase
and it points to dispensing requirements
or how do I reduce density
so that I get some level of increased distancing
amongst my employees.
So that way you can look at network data
and figure out,
okay, where the hotspots are in terms of people density?
And can I go make changes to those
to try and lower that meet my internal guidelines
or public safety guidelines.
To shared spaces are also a medium of transmission
you know, of this particular virus or disease.
And so shared spaces like conference rooms,
cafeteria tables, and others that we can again
use the network to figure out usage of those,
and potentially provide guidelines to cleaning crews
to pay more attention to certain spaces
in favor of others that are not necessarily
seeing the same level of usage.
And three, if in the unfortunate situation
that some individual becomes a person of interest,
we can quickly figure out all of the spaces
that they have been in in the past certain window,
including who else they could have overlap
or being close to within that space, right?
So at least you're not relying purely on human memory
for contact tracing,
there's a certain level of additional data
that can be used to enhance or refresh human memory.
That is really what we see happening
in the business recovery.
But you made a good point on what is the new normal
because as we again, talk to customers trying to gauge
what is going to stick beyond the recovery phase, right?
If you fast forward let's say a year from now
we have a vaccine and the virus troll,
are we all going to go back to where we were
before the virus entered our lives.
And the common opinion seems to be
that some things are here to stay.
And you look at work from home,
you made a reference to that.
A lot of our customers do believe
that there is going to be an increased amount of work from home
that stays with us even after the viruses out of our lives.
That again refreshes all the things
we've built for the business continuity continues forward,
even as some of you know we start to get back
into physical spaces.
Security again is paramount, right?
The home essentially as far as IT is concerned,
is an uncontrolled in one.
Because they just don't have control over many things
that happen in employees homes.
And so how do we bring in a layer of visibility
and some degree of control in an environment
that is inherently not subject to that level of control,
the same way that an office building can be.
And those are the kinds of things that we're looking at.
When we talk to higher education customers for example,
they are looking at plans for them
they know this upcoming fall semester
or for the next academic year
of running their classrooms at 30% occupancy.
So if you have 100 students sign up for a class,
physically in the classroom
they only want to have 30 students
and the other 70 could be on campus
or they're all dialed in remotely or online into the class.
But how do you manage this process?
So which 30 people get to be in the classroom
for any particular day?
And we believe that a lot of these work,
the workflows and interesting use cases
that directly address the intelligent edge
are going to become important as we get into them.
>> All right, I'm glad you talked about the intelligent edge.
So your keynote that you gave it atmosphere
was accelerating innovation at the edge
and you had the tough task
of being right before the Space X speaker too.
So give our audience a little bit about the innovation.
How should we be thinking about the edge?
>> So at atmosphere digital two weeks ago,
Aruba announced the Edge services platform
or ESP for short.
And it's a little bit of a play
because we really believe that we're building solutions
that have a sixth sense
in sensing what end users are looking for,
what stakeholders are looking for,
when problems show up
and how do we quickly resolve them,
So that degree of focus on data driven AI operations
was a key in us starting to coined the term ESP
or Edge services platform, right?
So it really looks at addressing,
not just connectivity, connect and protect,
but also analyze an act
because the telemetry data coming out of the network
is really the same data that helps the business recovery.
But we want to actually bubble that up,
and put it into a common data lake
that helps us deliver a better connection and connectivity
and security service,
but also enable all of these experiences
and outcomes at the edge.
And so the ESP or the Edge services platform
was a key announcement at atmosphere this year.
And we see that as the foundation
on which everything that we're going to do
starting now is going to get build up.
>> Yeah I'm curious,
we talked about some of the things
that have been accelerated
due to the current situation after that respond,
work from home,
when you look at edge environments,
is that something you see people accelerating them?
Are they pausing them?
Is it just kind of happening at the same pace?
Any data or sense that you have from users right now?
>> So edge is going to become even more important.
We used to focus on the edge.
We've had the focus on edge for a while,
but until now, until the pandemic hit us,
the assumption is always that,
people are going to show up in physical spaces.
And then let's focus on the experiences and the outcomes.
I believe with the pandemic coming in,
some of the power of choice
has shifted towards the user or the person,
in choosing whether they want to consume a particular service
or experience by going to a physical space
or by staying at home and doing it online.
Writing online, I look at the past few weeks,
we've had a few birthday parties
where we used to meet in person
and now we're all doing it over zoom
or other video conferencing technologies.
So that choice moving over to the person
means that we can't just assume
that people are going to show up in physical spaces
and then focus only on,
Okay, once they show up what can I do
about the experience or the outcomes.
The focus on edge is now shifting to where,
we have to even look at enabling technologies
and experiences that entice people
that convince people to come into that physical space
and consume that service and our experience.
And that means that,
the scope of what we do at the intelligent edge
actually is going to increase, is going to widen.
And that's the reason why it was timely
that we were working on the Edge services platform,
even we started working on it
long before the pandemic ever showed up in our radar.
But that focus is now putting us in the right place,
from a competitive perspective,
to leverage all of the technologies that we built so far,
to package it up together to offer our customers
something that is far beyond just connectivity and security.
>> Great, the final question I have for you.
You're talking about these,
not necessarily in person experiences.
Here we have to discover virtual experience.
Give our audience just a little bit
as to what they expect from Aruba
and what you want people to take away
from the Discover virtual experience
when it comes to Aruba and networking at HPE.
>> Right, and you know, the common we kind of,
when we talk to some customers,
there's always an association of the Aruba brand
to wireless LAN.
And over time in the past five years
has been part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
We've kind of expanded that to include auto networking
and some of the security functions that we offer.
But more importantly, I'd encourage everybody
to go look at some of the technologies
that we packaged together
as part of the Edge services platform
and how they can help our customers,
not just IT but also all of the other stakeholders
within their organizations
to create that compelling experiences
and outcomes at the Edge.
>> Excellent, well thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate all the updates.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> All right, stay tuned for more coverage,
HPE Discover Virtual Experience.
I'm Stu Miniman, thank you for watching TheCUBE.
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